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thedrifter
06-07-06, 05:36 AM
Haditha case puts "strained" Marines in spotlight
By Alastair Macdonald

U.S. Marines, fighting in some of the most violent territory in Iraq, often battle their own frustrations as much as the enemy in a guerrilla war against an adversary who blends easily into the local population.

Marines are suspected of killing two dozen men, women and children in the city of Haditha last November, and human rights groups have said it may qualify as a war crime.

"These guys are under tremendous strain, more strain than I can conceive of. And this strain has caused them to crack," said U.S. Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), a Pennsylvania Democrat and retired Marine colonel.

Marines are fighting against Sunni Muslim rebels and al Qaeda militants in the vast dusty sweep of western Iraq, many now on third lengthy deployments of almost daily combat.

Reuters correspondents who have spent time with Marine units from the Syrian border, down the Euphrates river through Haditha and Falluja toward Baghdad recall the aggressive, tightly bonded mobile infantry companies taking the heaviest casualties of the war and struggling with their own frustrations.

These frustrations come from hunting an enemy who blends quickly and easily into the local population, but also stem from the way insurgents have repeatedly regrouped once the thinly stretched Marines move on to other targets in the Anbar region.

Some called it the "Whack-A-Mole War" last year when towns like Qaim or Haditha would be stormed, only for the rebels rapidly to reappear, like the moles in the children's game.

In Anbar the U.S. military has unleashed the raw, lean, muscle-and-bone cutting edge of its huge, high-tech forces on its most stubborn and aggressive foes in Iraq.

Marines are facing unrelenting psychological stress in an unforgiving environment in which they encounter constant threats from roadside bombs on patrol, a hostile population and mortar attacks on their bases, said Daniel Goure, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank in Virginia.

"There is no more hellish place on earth for American forces than Anbar province," Goure said. "When all is said and done -- not in casualties but in stress -- it is up there with the battle for Manila, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Guadalcanal."

"You simply never know who to trust. Is the kid on the street a spotter for the IED crew?" Goure added, referring to improvised explosive devices dug into roadsides by insurgents.

"There is the perception that nowhere is safe," said Goure, who questioned whether U.S. troops were getting adequate training to prepare for such an environment.

The small Marine Corps, scrappy troops trained to smash into the enemy and hold territory till the heavy brigades of the Army arrive, are trying to train Iraqi forces to take control. But hard fighting persists even in the provincial capital Ramadi.

And a force trained to conquer beachheads is not guaranteed to win local hearts and minds. The dispatch of a reserve force to Ramadi may be welcome to Marines who complained quietly last year that they were simply too few for the job.

TRAINED KILLERS

And it is not that Marines like those under suspicion at Haditha do not like fighting. They are trained to kill and, usually within the bounds of discipline, seem to relish combat.

"C'mon captain, Kilo's getting all my kills!" a Reuters reporter heard one lament to his commander in Karabila last year as another unit stormed house-to-house in what an officer described with relish as "old school, door-to-door fighting."

Marines take a perverse pride in a sense of themselves as the Army's poor relation in terms of budget, equipment and manpower. Many exude a bravado about taking greater risks than an Army with whom inter-service rivalry borders on hostility.

The military said more than 700 Marines have died in the war, which began in March 2003. About 21,000 Marines are in Iraq in a 132,000-strong U.S. force, and Marines generally serve seven-month stints in Iraq.

The martial spirit is instilled from the top down -- one colonel told men before battle in Karabila: "There's a lot of knuckleheads here who have to get dead. I'm going to help them."

Indeed for many Marines, who love their guns, what they hate most about the war in Iraq is not fighting -- and especially not being able to fight back when their friends are killed.

November's killings at Haditha, where militants had imposed Taliban-style Islamic rule last summer before Marines stormed the fearful city of 90,000, followed the death of a popular 20-year-old lance corporal from Texas in a roadside bomb blast.

In late 2004, this reporter observed a similar 12-man squad deal with the deaths of two comrades in such an attack. Without rest for six months, and some still wounded from the bombing, they raided home after home along the Euphrates, meeting stares and silence as they sought the hidden killers of their friends.

"It's the unseen enemy. ... It's very frustrating," one said.

"Why won't he come out and fight?" asked another as the squad chafed under their sergeant's discipline and his demands they treat Iraqis whose homes they were searching with respect.

"... Iraqis, they're so ... ungrateful," one young Marine said, peppering his speech with expletives. "I ... hate them."

Another man snapped: "He killed my best friend," he yelled. "It's not fair. I'm not playing this game any more." The Marine opened fire. Everyone froze. The dog that was his target lived.

No one died that day. The bonding of men at war is vital to any army and Marines place great stress on it. But their commander General Michael Hagee was recently in Iraq to remind them to keep emotions in check as Iraq continues to test the limits of the U.S. military.

"We use lethal force only when justified," Hagee said.

"This is the American way of war."

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff, Michael Georgy and Will Dunham)

Ellie